marniere

Speakeasy Love Hard: The Interview

Posted on September 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

I recently sat down with myself to ask myself some questions about the September 24th performance of Speakeasy Love Hard @ the Shitty Barn in Spring Green. We enjoyed some mocha latte in the busy dining room of our Spring Green home, as little Lego men tried to corral Jurassic Park dinosaurs and our crazy cat chased pipe cleaners.

Tell us about Speakeasy Love Hard .

Sexy. Funny. Poetry.

That’s what I’ve been saying, and that just about covers it, but in more specific terms, I’ve worked with David Daniel to come up with a lightly-, slightly-staged version of some of my narrative poetry.

The main feature is based around a set of poems called Speakeasy Love Hard, which take place in the 1920s. A young woman leaves home, makes a friend, meets a veteran of WWI, falls in love—experiences all the wildness of Prohibition St. Louis. There’s a little baseball, too—I have a poem called “Urban Shocker.”

Sarah Day and Nate Burger and possibly another mystery woman will be the performers for Speakeasy Love Hard.

After half-time, Nate Burger will be reading some other poems, also sexy, also shocking. David Daniel might even get in on the fun.

Shocking? Could you give us an example?

Well, sure—some general warnings—there’s profanity here and there, and what the ratings board would call sexual situations. No actual nudity though. That I know of. But definitely for mature audiences only.

This one’s called “Ballad of the Bad Man.” It’s sort of mildly shocking.

You take me down to the wrong side of town
At night you do, you know it.
For you, baby, I’d swallow the moon.
All that dark, and us glowing.

My whole life I’ve hated morning.
A sunny day can slay you.
The only thing between me and you
Is hours. I’m pretty good at waiting.

Report for duty at midnight, sir.
We get one shift of happiness.
Every joke and drink is work
To get us started. Make it last.

We both wake up from bad dreams at 3:00.
You hit me once without seeing
Who it was you hit.
I was crying before I felt it.

You take me down to the bad side of town.
At night you do, you know it.
I go down without a fight.
Wherever you want me, I’m going.

So, other than the appeal of a life of illicit lust, what would you say the message of the piece is?

Well, as I told Mr. Daniel, I don’t actually think too much about the message. I figure if I’m doing my job focusing on the music of the language and the flesh-and-bloodness of the characters, the message will just come out on its own.

But once he asked me that, I started thinking about it, and I think my work centers on these four things:

You have to laugh.
You could always have sex.
You rail at God.
You make it through.
(Repeat as needed.)

The poster is pretty hot. Could you talk a little about that?

I’m so lucky to be married to a multi-talented man! Nath Dresser is a singer songwriter—he performed recently at the Shitty Barn at a celebration of Townes Van Zandt. But he’s also a talented photographer, and he designed the poster. When he showed me the image, I just about swooned.

Have you worked with David Daniel or Sarah Day or Nate Burger before?

David was the director last year for my 10-minute play for 24-7 here in Spring Green. On the first read-through he said, “You’re insane,” but I assumed he meant that in the nicest possible way. I’d written a verse play overnight, with three sonnets and two sea-chanteys that had to be cut back for the performance. He did an admirable job shepherding my terrific actors through my insanity, so I thought he’d be good to work with again.

Sarah Day inspires me, generally and consistently and greatly, but she’s also done me the honor of reading my play drafts, and she’s done several dinner-table readings of them, and she participated in a reading/workshop at UW-Richland, of a play which is now called Second Blessing.

I think Sarah and David are phenomenal—I can’t really say enough about how thrilled I am to work with them again.

I haven’t worked with Nate before, but I’ve seen his work at APT, and I know he loves poetry, so I’m excited to get to work with him.

What’s your Bacon Number?

I think four, if writers count (and they might not). Because Randall Duk Kim’s number is two, so Sarah Day’s number is three (or hers might be higher—I’ll have to ask), so if writers count (and, again, they probably don’t), mine is four.

Everybody’s too busy and everybody’s broke. Why should anyone fork out $7 and three hours for Speakeasy Love Hard?

Great question. First of all, the actors are terrific. You know how people say they’d pay to hear certain actors read from the phone book? Well, these poems are at least as good as a phone book. Second, the Shitty Barn. I’ve never not had a good time at the Shitty Barn.

And finally, how many golf balls can you fit in a 747?

I have no idea. But 7:47 was when I was supposed to leave for school when I was grade school. I was a latch-key kid, so I was in charge of getting myself to school on time. Knowing me, 7:47 is not when I left. It’s probably just when I thought, “I’m supposed to leave now.”

All righty then. Anything else you want people to know?

Nope—just hope to see everyone on Monday, September 24, at 7:30 at the Shitty Barn! Buy your tickets in advance if you don’t want to wait in line!

Updates and information are available at
https://marniere.wordpress.com/speakeasy-love-hard-the-shitty-barn/

Tickets can be purchased at the door or in advance at
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/275278

The Heart of the Farm

Posted on September 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

for Joy

The woman, the wife, of course, could be the heart,

The husband could, or the children, doing their part

To keep machinery humming—the chore machine,

The pet machine, the house-barn-garden machine.

They grow up fast on farms, those children do.

Maybe the heart of the farm is the land. It’s true

Each generation adds their hard-earned sweat

To the soil, but it’s the land sustaining it.

I think the heart of the farm is made of wood,

Or maybe metal and enamel, handed down

When someone in the family could buy new

Or someone died. The kitchen table holds

Conversations, accounts payable, and food–

It’s so alive it almost makes a sound.

Fall Semester 2012: Already Not Excellent

Posted on September 4, 2012 | 7 comments

I say this somewhat ironically–really, it’s too early to tell, especially since none of my classes meet until tomorrow.

But I decided to make up a “First Day of the Semester Rubric” as a way to introduce the concept of rubrics to students, and to begin talking about expectations (mine for me, theirs for me, mine for them, theirs for themselves, ours for the universe in general).

first-day rubric

And this is how the semester is already not excellent–I don’t have the full semester schedule for all my classes ready yet, and it won’t be ready for all of them by tomorrow.

But I do have a lot done, and, as per the rubric, I anticipate showing up early and being enthusiastic and focused for each of my four classes tomorrow. I’ll report back and let you know how it went!

In the meantime, I’m relatively fired up and kinda sorta ready to go.

7 Comments

Posted in Burnout, Procrastination, Teaching, Work Life

Tagged semester schedule

Professor is “Person of Interest” in Crime Against Civility

Posted on August 25, 2012 | 4 comments

My contract starts up again on Monday, and one of the things I’ll be working on before classes start is Xeroxing my yellow and red warning cards–if anyone’s late to class one time, it’s an automatic yellow card, no matter the reason. Late a second time? Red card.

Once you get a red card, you have two options: go talk to our Student Services Director, so he can either kick some serious ass, or do some problem solving. Option #2 means you go to our Roadrunner Café Lunch Ladies and you do

WHATEVER THEY TELL YOU TO.

You don’t get to come back to class until you have the signature from one of those folks.

The policy applies to me as much as my students, and it’s kept me on time, as much as it has my students. (Before motherhood, I swear I was NEVER late to class. But the last 7.5 years, I’ve felt so scrambled for time that I’m always thinking I can get just one more thing done before I walk over to class….)

Sure, it’s a little juvenile, which one of my consistently-tardy students complained, immediately, loudly, last fall when I introduced the cards. But, as another student said to him, “So get to class on time.”

What I like about this policy is that #1, it worked. #2, it was silly enough to bring some lightness to the subject. #3, it was so clear-cut that there wasn’t much fussing about it when someone was late. I think the idea began germinating when one of my colleagues said he has a cardboard box at the front of the room and anyone who was late had to bring a donation for the food pantry the next class period. I liked that, but then there’s a box to deal with, and worrying about students stealing ramen when I wasn’t looking. Warning cards seemed easier, and sillier. (And as we always used to say at Lake Benton Baptist Camp, soccer players have the best legs.)

All the best advice about handling classroom incivility involves making expectations clear and enforcing rules consistently.

The red card/yellow card (in addition to now implying that I perhaps watched more than three minutes of the Summer Olympics) allows me to be clear and consistent.

Do I wish, as a college professor, that I didn’t have to do anything like this, ever?

Sure. But if wishes were horses, I’d find them alarming and probably be allergic to them.

Part of what helps me love my job is that I try to teach the students I have, not the students I wish I had. And honestly? If I had the students I wish I had, I’d probably miss the ones I have now.

If I get out of teaching anytime soon, it won’t be because of my students.

We’ve seemed to have waves of tardiness at UW-Richland in the 20 years I’ve been there. Some semesters it’s an issue, most semesters not.

But I try not to blame students for this, not after I’ve made my expectations clear. I teach at a two-year campus, so I’m getting a lot of 18- and 19-year-old hooligan-wannabes, and my thinking is that they are JUST NOW absolutely responsible for themselves.

I’ve explored the issue of civility in the classroom a number of times in workshops that I facilitated, and that workshop is now available online, at the UW Colleges Virtual Teaching and Learning Center. It’s a narrated power point, and you can watch/listen any time you want, should you want to.

I try to emphasize the notion that if things are going badly in the classroom, it is, first and foremost, the professor’s job to figure out why. It behooves us, frankly, to look at ourselves as a “person of interest” in the case of crimes against civility.

These workshops have worked best in groups where faculty, staff, and students were present—otherwise, it’s too easy for one group to complain about the others. In groups with a cross-section, too, it becomes clear that there isn’t one right way to handle any of this. I would never say, for example, that everyone, or even anyone other than me, should use red warning cards as a way to curb tardiness. It works for me; it’s up to us to find what works for us.

I’m genuinely fond of students, and that comes across pretty consistently, but I’m still guilty of what they’d list as “bad professor behavior” sometimes–being too disorganized. It’s a relative thing, of course. I’m way more organized than some of my peers, and I’m not joking at all when I say I think there’s a lot of undiagnosed ADHD in academia.

But I’m more organized all the time, and one of the BIG crimes against civility I’ve been guilty of over the years–taking too long to return student work–is REMARKABLY improved (which is why I keep remarking on it–a fair number of the posts in my blog on procrastination have to do with this issue).

In fact, the fact that you can access a perfectly lovely version of the narrated power point on the VTLC site is proof I’m more organized. I offered to narrate it last spring so Jennifer Heinert, the current director of the VTLC, could make it part of an online workshop. I didn’t know at the time, but if you use a Mac to narrate a power point, the narration is likely to just cut out. Randomly. I didn’t have time to fix it last spring, but since Jennifer was getting good feedback on “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Civility and Responsibility in the Classroom,” I wanted to make it right, and I told her I’d fix it over the summer.

It took several tries of narrating test power points on the Mac before I finally Googled the issue and found out it was mostly the Mac. Then I had to line up a mic for my office PC. Then I had to copy/paste each slide into a new document, because the mix of ppt/pptx in the old one was making the whole thing freeze up in places.

So it wasn’t perfect last spring, in terms of content, and it’s still not. I wish it were even more of a scholarly project—hope someone else can move it in a more rigorous SoTL/Scholarship of Teaching and Learning direction. It was absolutely FLAWED last spring in terms of execution. Still, it did some good, and now it’s fired up and ready to go for the fall semester.

Thus, even though I do not technically, typically score high in conscientiousness self-assessments, I am capable of doggedly finishing a project.

In this case, it’s because I have immense respect for Jennifer Heinert, and the original UWC VTLC Director, Nancy Chick, and I’m thrilled to be a part of what is a really valuable resource for us in the UW Colleges (and elsewhere—it’s online! It’s free! It’s pretty-much open access! It might be a MOOC!)

But I was also determined to make it work better because civility in the classroom is so important, and if I can do anything to spark conversations that make civility more common, I’m on it.

[The original title of this blog was “Kids These Days,” but I changed it. Even ironically, I didn’t like adding to that chorus. It’s not that I think my students always behave in lovely ways. They don’t, and I call them on it. But “kids these days” not only makes me sound old and crabby even when I insist I’m trying to make a joke about it, it’s not “these days.” I was very squirrelly as a first-year college student, and that was nearly 35 years ago. I was so squirrelly that my son would probably rate it as “Volume A.”]

4 Comments

Posted in Burnout, Procrastination, Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life

Tagged education

On Conscientiousness

Posted on August 20, 2012 | 5 comments

It smells like cider, my ongoing, lifelong lack
Of industry. We’ve lived here twelve years now,
this summer becoming for us a massive wreck
of good intentions rotting on the ground.

I was so happy when we bought this house,
With its fulsome, near-truck-garden and fruit trees.
But year by year I’ve scaled back. It turns out
I can’t work full-time and be a mom and weed.

Or maybe I just can’t keep up with everything
I wish I could. Unnecessary further proof
I am not Robert Frost: apple-picking
Exhausts me before I ever start. The ruin

of this apple harvest shames me, and yet—
a mess like this taught ancient humans to ferment.

I am now caught up with apple-mucking (cleaning up the rotten apples on the ground under our apple tree), and we did harvest enough to make some apple sauce. But there’s still a faint smell of cider in our backyard, and I’m sure the yellow jackets are still on the prowl. Now they can focus more on the rotten apples hanging high up in the tree, which I can no longer reach, because the apple-picking tool for high branches broke last year. It was modeled on one my Granma Roane used for her cherry tree–a broom handle with an empty tin can attached to the end.

I’m campaigning for a massive pruning of this tree this fall. It’s tall enough it could conceivably be a problem for the phone lines that run through it. Also, it’s too big for an orchard tree, and although we don’t have an orchard, we do have a plum tree and an asparagus bed, and some years I have an actual vegetable garden, so I need this tree to be manageable. Here’s what I’d like—a much smaller tree that I feel good about taking good, organic-gardener care of. I’d like to learn more about apple maggots and whatnot, so that our next harvest will yield fewer BUT MUCH NICER apples. The ones we get now are not the kind you can just pluck off the tree, polish up, and take a big bite out of. Almost every one has a worm in it, so you have to wash them & cut them & use only the parts not bruised by worm travel.

Pruning back the apple tree feels metaphorical to me right now.

This time last year, I came across an article in the New York Times on Grit. I loved the article a lot, and shared it with my students in my composition classes. Many of them seemed to benefit from it. Angela Duckworth is featured in the article; her research coined the term “grit,” and she has questionnaires available where you can see how “gritty” you are, and also how ambitious you are.

I would be VERY gritty if it weren’t for needing to admit that statements like “new ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones” are indeed “very much like me.” (If there were an option on the Likert scale that said, “Are you kidding? This is me, 1,000,000%,” I would have to choose that one.)

I am VERY ambitious. No qualifiers.

This article and Duckworth’s grit research helped me realize last fall that chief among the many things keeping me from realizing my ambitions, is my tendency to start new projects (without every actually letting go of previous projects). I decided to list, off the top of my head, the projects I had in mind to work on and complete in the next three years or so. Without even straining my memory at all, I came up with 17 projects. 17. Each of which I estimated would take six months to a year to complete, assuming that I still have to teach to pay the bills. Crazy. So I set up a survey asking people to help me decide where to focus my efforts. Not surprisingly, the votes were pretty evenly spread out, because I tried to choose people who knew me from a variety of contexts.

One thing that got proportionally more votes, which surprised me, was having actors perform some of my narrative poetry at The Sh*tty Barn (an amazing venue in Spring Green). So I churned out some grant applications, and am now in the process of working on that performance with David Daniel as my director. (More on that project soon, as we get the cast set and rehearsals in full gear—but mark your calendars: it’s happening on Monday, September 24, 2012!)

One thing that got fewer votes, proportionally, was raising funds for a sabbatical project—developing creativity workshops. I’m plowing ahead with that. It occurred to me as I was reading the survey results that I had not talked to many people about the project—so why would they vote for it?

(Blogging got a lot of votes. So here I am.)

My friend Kim’s response to the survey was recommending that I read an article on Atul Gawande (which I wrote about a little in a previous post, “On the Lighting of Farts and the Reduction of Bile”).

I identified with Gawande’s push for excellence, but I suspect I do not work as many hours as he does. I also suspect he is someone who needs less sleep than I do. (I often suspect this of successful people, which may not be logical.)

Regardless, I was already learning that I can only realistically work on one or two professional projects at a time even before I came across this quote:

“Highly productive academics focus on one thing at a time….Switching back and forth between ideas breaks up concentration and eats up valuable time. By contrast, people who meditate and focus on breathing are better able to concentrate and focus on their immediate tasks,” which comes from an article that brought Angela Duckworth back to the forefront of my brain recently.

(She’s also on my mind because I’m working on my syllabi for the fall semester, even though I’m not on contract again until 8/27.)

The article is called “Traits of the ‘Get It Done’ Personality: Laser Focus, Resilience, and True Grit” recently appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Ed.

NOW, in addition to Duckworth’s Grit and Ambition scales, I could also take Brent Roberts’ Conscientiousness quiz!

It turns out I score above average in virtue and responsibility (I will always be at least partially the GOOD BAPTIST GIRL I strove to be whilst growing up), and then ALMOST up to average on industriousness, and then far below average on self-control, order, and traditionalism. (Of those, I’d like to improve in self-control most. I’m not sure how much order I actually want or need, though more than I currently have, probably. Don’t care at all about traditionalism.)

The Chronicle article does a nice job of pointing out that it takes a balance of traits to publish successfully in academia—that you also need to be creative, and if you score high in traditionalism, for example, you’re not going to score high in creativity.

The article quotes Roberts: “If you look at the profile for someone who’s realized creative success, they can’t be conventional….Whether you’re an engineer or an artist or an English professor, your job is to create new knowledge.”

Which brings us back to those apples.

Yes, I wish I’d kept up with them as the summer wore on. Yes, I wish I’d pruned the tree years ago. Yes, I wish I’d hung up all manner of pie tins and jingle bells to scare away the birds and squirrels who started enjoying the apples long before they were ripe. Not having done any of those things, I am currently satisfied with having mucked up most of the cider makings.

I anticipate pruning the tree back because the huge harvest of minimally useful apples is not something I’m capable of (willing to be? interested in?) staying on top of. A significantly smaller harvest of more usable apples—I’ll Robert Frost myself all over that.

Metaphorically, then, I’m also learning how to prune back my short-term, how-much-can-I-actually-get-done-in-a-year ambitions. If I keep coming up with new ideas all the time, without following very many projects through to completion, I’ll end up with a multitude of rotten projects at my feet. (And that attracts yellow jackets, which, in my case, since I’ve already been promoted to full professor, can’t be a dossier committee—could be, instead, a hiring or grants committee that turns me down, OR, more likely, my own self-loathing thoughts.)

Let me emphasize–over the years, I have followed a number of projects through to completion, to respectable levels of success. Just not as many projects, and not the level of success I’d prefer. Other years I put up more apple sauce, in other words.

Two final thoughts on those apples–I suspect there’s a yellow jacket symbol for “kind-hearted woman” etched on every building and etchable plant in our yard, which, unfortunately, won’t keep them from stinging me.

And then this–if everyone on the planet had always been diligent about harvesting everything right when it was ripe and not letting anything rot, we would never, as a people, have discovered beer.

5 Comments

Posted in Creativity, Family, Poetry, Procrastination, Teaching, Uncategorized, Work Life

The End of the Drought

Posted on August 9, 2012 | 3 comments

“nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands”

                        e.e. cummings

That’s where you’re wrong, e.e. (can I call you e.?)

Because when you’ve been in a drought and it finally rains,

Rains hard, sky green, trees whip-dancing like Salome,

Each drop reaches in like the tiniest hand, a clean

Well-meaning touch of good intent and love,

And suddenly I approach believing in a God

Who has a plan that we’ll eventually be fond of,

Once we learn the particulars she had in mind.

And even when we find ourselves still caught

In hell, in misery, injustice not

Yet made right, the pouring rain is pushing pause,

Is washing fresh, is resurrection, is applause.

I can’t remember ever being more

In love with the rain, or anyone, not ever.

3 Comments

Posted in God Stuff, Poetry, Uncategorized

A Knottier Wretch Post: Mary and Martha and Rest Vs. Work

Posted on July 26, 2012 | 2 comments

Did you know that when you do an anagram of “Protestant Work Ethic,” you come up with “Procrastinate, Ewok!”

O.k., not really—it leaves a couple of letters unused and you have to throw in an extra “a.”

You do get “a thickset rotten prow” or “a sphincter totter wok” or “a thrice strew topknot,” however (all courtesy of a fun anagramming site, but you should also Google anagram). Overall, my general lack of anagramming skills is one of three or four things that would keep me from competing in an actual Scrabble tourney. But I really, really want to mess with that Protestant work ethos.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary and Martha this summer.

The basic story is in Luke 10: people are gathered at Mary and Martha and Lazarus’s house (L. will later be raised from the dead by Jesus), and Martha complains to Jesus that Mary isn’t helping, “Don’t you care that she’s left me to do all the work by myself?” There may well have been a lot of work—Jesus was traveling with a crowd of up to 70 disciples (not that they were all in that one house together), and this is a time and a place where hospitality was taken very seriously. And the house is identified as Martha’s in the story. She has a prominent role in the gospels. In this story she’s an antagonist, but then she’s the first, even before Peter, to identify Jesus as the Messiah.

In this particular story, instead of helping, Mary was sitting at Jesus’s feet & listening to him. Jesus apparently enjoys that, because he tells Martha she’s worried and distracted, and that (in the King James Version), “only one thing is needful.” That Mary’s listening is more important than Martha’s bustling.

A blog post I like, “Mary and Martha: A Story About God’s Radical Hospitality,” on the “Grace Rules” blog (not sure who the author is but it was written in response to a request from Julie Goss Clawson, a writer I enjoy a lot) deals with the M&M story and says, after quoting Jesus’s response to Martha, “At this point, someone usually teaches a lesson about how important it is not to get so busy that we forget to spend quiet, contemplative time with Jesus. And while I think that is a good lesson I have a feeling we may be missing the point of what Jesus is talking about.” “Grace Rules” outlines how subversive Jesus was being here, and I think that’s exactly right. He’s upending expectations about gender roles and hospitality and busy-ness and lots of other things in the mix.

I was wondering a while back who would spend more time on Facebook—Mary, Martha, or Lazarus? I said I was pretty sure Jesus would have friended all three of them. Here are some of the responses:
⋅ “I think it would have to be Lazarus, since he would get a second chance at it.”
⋅ “How much would Jesus love FB and Twitter?!”
⋅ “Mary wins out. . .her sensitive, caring, compassionate side means that she would answer even the wildest commentary the social network has to offer …. In other words, she would be a terrific online friend. Lazarus, I fear, will probably just sit at the gate of the city, dreaming of his ordeal, not wishing to share with anyone. He would not be a good friend.”

I thought Lazarus would have one of the all-time great status updates, post-resurrection, though, if he chose to post it, “I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!” or “Know how we all thought I was dead?”

We agreed that Martha would have short posts, things like “Just mopped again!” or slams, “Wish I had more time to spend on Facebook, but I have things to do, unlike some people I know.”

The thing is, of course, that sometimes, things just need to get done.

I also asked a more serious question this summer on Facebook—who’s your nominee for someone who does more than just “get a lot done,” someone who seems to get the right things done. I didn’t word it as clearly as I might have because there was a lot of confusion about whether I meant “do the right thing” as in a moral choice—but I mostly meant someone who isn’t just busy or efficient, but has real impact in important ways. I got several nominees, and I emailed those nominees to see if they could talk about HOW they do that (in my ongoing quest to figure out how to GET SHIT DONE). Three of them were nice enough to respond—

Michael Broh, a member of Spring Green’s Village Board and Production Manager at American Players Theatre, said, “I’m honored by the nomination, but I must decline. As far back as I can remember, I’ve believed myself to live in a subjective universe, one in which there is as little place for right as there is for wrong.

In terms of what drives me to make the decisions I do make, and when, I suppose it is a combination of self interest, and a feeble attempt to look beyond the immediate, and treat long term implications with equal importance.”

(I guess I’m not technically letting him decline since I’m mentioning him here—the nomination didn’t actually lead to anything other than a public compliment and a mention in an obscure blog, but it’s a sincere compliment, and he did say I could quote him.)

Melinda Van Slyke is the owner/operator of Heart of the Sky Fair Trade and a local Progressive activist. Here’s what she had to say:

“True story: One day at swimming lessons (I was probably 4 or 5 at the time) we were all lined up at the side of the pool with the instructions being to jump one by one into the arms of our awaiting swim teacher. The little boy in front of me would not jump in. He just stood there, refusing to jump in, knowing that he should, (in my little girl mind) holding up the show. I very calmly pushed him in and immediately jumped in right behind him.

So that’s the secret to my so-called success. Don’t over think it. Just jump in and do it. Don’t wait for other people to be ready and sure as hell don’t wait for permission. But I like to think that now instead of pushing people *out* of my way I push (encourage) them to get involved and do things that they haven’t done before and hopefully they realize that hey, that wasn’t so bad after all.”

This is a terrific description of her mode, except I see her more as “offering to push.” And as I was diving into collecting signatures for Walker’s recall, for example—I was grateful for the push.

The other person who answered the email was Jan Swenson, who’s so good at getting things done she made the news. Her response to the question of how she gets things done was this: “I do the right things politically when the need arises (i.e. when ‘my’ candidate needs support or when a governor needs to be recalled). Musically, I do concerts when there is a need to raise money for something I want to support or when I can help publicize community events. My last choral concert was to raise money for our local food pantries and for ‘4 Pete’s Sake.’ The concert before that was in memory of Mitch Feiner (one of our finest musicians!) and was a fundraiser for his 3 children’s college educations. As for volunteering in the community, I do that because I love APT and want to support them any way I can, and my volunteer work at the school in Arena is to help those kids continue their amazing reading program. They read so many books that the librarian can’t keep up with filing the books!”

Not one of them mentioned the sort of stillness and listening and contemplation we associate with Mary in the M&M story (because, of course, that’s not what I asked them about, and not what they were nominated for–each nominated by more than one of my Facebook friends). They all sound productive, they truly are productive in important ways, I’m pleased to be a part of the community they’re active in, pleased to benefit from the fact that they are, in KJV lingo, “cumbered with many things.” They’re inspiring, and if I can generalize, I would say that they’re describing the need for vision, courage, and responsiveness, all three of which I know I am capable of only if there’s rest and contemplation on my to do list somewhere.

The thing that I find most difficult in balancing my Mary side with my Martha side is knowing WHEN to focus on resting versus acting. In recent blogs, I’ve described my struggles with figuring out how to honor the Sabbath (“Day of Rest, My Ass”) and figuring out how to procrastinate at just the right time (but not all the time) and stay busy (but not be consumed with busy-ness) and how burning trash is one of my all-time favorite activities, apparently (“Summer Theologica”).

It’s a hard balance—knowing when to get busy, and knowing when to rest and listen.

Even Jesus struggled with it. In the later story about Mary and Martha, Jesus shows up at their house because their brother Lazarus has died. Both sisters tell him that if he’d come sooner, they know he could have healed Lazarus. This is when we get the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.” You could say he’s weeping in disappointment because his good friends Mary and Martha don’t understand he’s capable of raising the dead (though to be fair to them, he had done that only one other time that we know of, and that was in a different gospel than the one they appear in, so they might not have heard about it). I’m sure I heard sermons like that—that his tears were tears of judgment. I don’t think so. You could also say, and these are the sermons I’ve heard most often, that he’s showing his human side and his love for his friends. That comes closer to feeling like the truth for me, but what if—what IF he’s crying not just out of sadness, but out of frustration with himself?

I have to think he was a good friend, and a good friend might well think here, “Oh my God, they’re right. So what if I can raise him from the dead? If I’d gotten here sooner, I wouldn’t have to, and they wouldn’t be so torn up….”

(It is possible that Jesus would NOT say “oh my God,” but would instead say, “Oh I’m God” or perhaps not take the Lord’s name in vain at all, since that is one of the Top Ten.)

Fortunately for me, since I’m a writer, writing about work qualifies as work, or I’d have to admit that all my time blogging is neither restful (especially not these last three posts–I kept thinking I was writing about Mary and Martha but finding I had too much to say about the points I thought were going to lead quickly to M&M) nor productive.

Even when writing feels like hard work, it doesn’t feel like work–partly because I do it pro bono most of the time.

It’s all the other things on my to do list (28 things on today’s list, 15 of which I’d hoped to have done before I hit the sack tonight, which doesn’t seem likely, although writing this blog is on the list so I can check that off at least) that feel like work that make me wonder:

If I’m allowing myself to indulge in a Mary moment, am I really resting and listening? Or am I just procrastinating the next needful Martha moment? Am I giving due diligence to the “incubation” stage of creativity? Or am I resisting every other everything that has to be achieved for successful creativity?

Let me just meditate on each moment of my answer to the above questions:

don’t

know.

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Posted in Burnout, Creativity, God Stuff, Procrastination, Spring Green, Work Life

Tagged religion

Day of Rest, My Ass

Posted on July 22, 2012 | 2 comments

When I say Sunday dinner I mean lunch (although on other days, “dinner” means supper—I don’t know why) and I also mean hot meat of some sort. Today it was baked chicken, real mashed potatoes (skins-on), and three-bean salad (cheated on that—it came from a can).

In an alternate universe, this meal would have been served by me, wearing an apron, after a morning spent in church.

In this particular universe, there was no apron and no morning in church.

I never remember to put on an apron, and organized religion and I are spending some time apart. I am participating in what Wendell Berry’s character Jayber Crow called “disorganized religion,” which I typically call being a Zen Baptist.

What about you? Are you resting on this day of rest?

Some of the people who take the Bible most literally, who insist that Genesis is a literal description of creation (despite the fact that there are two creation stories in Genesis and a third in Proverbs 8), are adept at ignoring Genesis 2:2-3, when God rested and created the Sabbath—something Yahweh cared enough about, apparently, to put it on his Top Ten list, (this from Exodus 20)“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work….”

Of course, there are those who take this commandment very seriously, who won’t drive on the Sabbath, who work hard the day before to make food that can be eaten without work to prepare it. But that’s not what I grew up with, not my adult experience, although one of the reasons I love living in Spring Green is that I can function really well without driving anywhere. (Walking home from the bars is only a small part of that pleasure.)

It’s one of the more striking ironies of my life–any time I’ve belonged to a faith community, been an active participant in one, Sunday was anything BUT a day of rest.

Stretches when I’m in a wilderness time (which can be nasty and involve dehydration, or wonderful, like now), Sunday stands a much better chance of actually being a day of rest.

What do I mean by wilderness time? It’s a reference to Jesus’s time in the wilderness, first of all. Three of the four gospels tell the story of Jesus going into the desert, immediately after being baptized, to fast for 40 days and 40 nights. He’s tempted by Satan there (the best depiction of which I’ve ever seen occurs in the movie Jesus of Montreal, when the actor portraying Jesus in a suddenly-popular passion play has a lawyer telling him all the ways he could parlay this into fame and fortune).

If you focus on the gospels (as opposed to the epistles of the apostle Paul), one of the things that stands out is how often Jesus heads out on his own. My friend Tammy is the first person I recall hearing preach on this–she’s also the first person I remember pointing out to me that God pronounces he is “well pleased” with Jesus before Jesus has done anything we consider part of his work on Earth. Even after he begins that work, Jesus sneaks off a number of times, which should comfort both my slacker and my introvert friends.

I’m not saying that he was resting, exactly, as he was fasting and being tempted, but it was sort of a pause, an episode of time off the clock. His ministry won’t start until he leaves the desert, but it can’t start until he’s spent enough time in the desert.

Once his ministry starts, he somehow gets a reputation as a “wine-bibber and glutton,” which I grew up understanding was slander, that people were falsely accusing him of that. Really? I don’t know. I think Jesus had a prescription for chill pills, and knew when to take one.

Matthew 11 is a really interesting chapter. John the Baptist is in prison and sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he’s the Messiah (when John baptized Jesus, he didn’t seem to have any doubts about the matter). Jesus sends them back to John with a list of what he’s accomplished, a sort of short-form resume, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Then he adds, bizarrely coming at the end of this list, “And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.”

He spends some time praising John the Baptist, and then does a little comparison/contrast:

“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another,
‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

(I personally prefer “winebibber” to “drunkard,” because it sounds like so much more fun.)

It’s not literal, of course, John did eat and drink (honey and locusts, at the very least), and we don’t have Biblical evidence of Jesus eating too much or getting tipsy, but we do have evidence he appreciated good wine. Otherwise why would his first miracle be turning water into, not just wine, but wine pronounced as good wine?

The chapter ends with verses I’m pleased to take literally (and poetically, which is why I quote the King James version here): “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Never, not once, has my participation in a faith community felt easy or light. It has felt terrific, and right, and sustaining, and wonderful at times (not so great at other times). But easy? Or light? Not that I’m remembering.

So was Jesus just being ironic there?

I don’t think so, although he says things other times that contradict this (“Take up your cross daily” comes to mind—I often feel that just getting out of bed is my cross).

As someone who is nearly always teetering on the edge of burnout, I want to cling to those verses, make them real.

The title of this blog, “Day of Rest, My Ass,” is a poem written by a character in an old novel draft of mine, written during my first sabbatical, in 2004. She’s a burned-out preacher trying to find her way by working at a church camp one summer.

I understand why Jesus blesses anyone who doesn’t take offense. He did and said so many things to upset the apple quo, and advocating rest, for me a lot of days, tops the list.

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Posted in Burnout, Family, God Stuff, Spring Green, Work Life

Tagged jayber crow, religion, sabbath day, spirituality, theology

Summer Theologica, Part I

Posted on July 15, 2012 | 1 comment

In an earlier version of the following poem, which I, ahem, can’t seem to find, there was a line that said, “Television, being neither action nor contemplation, must be sin.” I’ve been contemplating the notions of action and contemplation this week (not so much acting on either notion), so I thought of that now-homeless line.

There is a burning ban in Wisconsin now (I’m scared to use the barbecue grill even), and we haven’t had enough rain for a very long time (and not much rain in the forecast), so even if we still lived out in the country, which we don’t, we wouldn’t be burning trash. The images of cold and wet are comforting to me at the moment:

SUMMER THEOLOGICA

Burning trash is better on the other Solstice,

December, the colder the better,
And even wind is fine
With enough snow cover.
Deep dark. We pile in
Two months of cat food bags
And Pop Tart boxes, low APR deals
And wadded up rough drafts.

One big blue kitchen match or two
Scraped fast against the barrel,
Which once was painted bright blue,
And the flame touches,
Tickles, dances, overwhelms
The trash. The chemical residue
In the barrels sends up thick smoke, sky blue.

Transformed! Detritus of the modern life
Consumed by fire, condensed to steam
And ash. Another chance to start again,
Another slate scorched clean.

The fire keeps you warm.
On Christmas Eve once, I sang
“Away in a Manger” while burning trash,
cows actually lowing nearby.

Bits of paper rise in the night,
Against the starry sky it’s hard
To keep saying paper, fire, ash—
Orange lace makes more sense,
Flickering warm constellations
In a coldly growing universe.
Our dwindling friend, the past, is receding.
One gust and there’s a gray hole
Where the tiny fireworks had been.

But we keep up with trash better
Spring, fall, summer, letting it pile up
Only if there’s a burning ban, and this summer,
There’s way too much rain for that.

Loading the barrel raises a cloud
Of mosquitoes from the puddle inside.
Die, demons, die, I say,
Lighting it fast. But they’re so thick.
I want to wear a smudge pot
Round my neck, dip my clothes in Deet
And citronella oil, set myself on fire.
At least immolation wouldn’t itch.
At least not at first.

There is something holy about fire,
I think to myself, dancing on the squishy
Ground to dodge all the whiny
Little proboscises aimed at me.
All that was is less.
The volume visibly reduced.
Blue incense rising slowly toward heaven.
Here it is, God, what was, what we no longer want.

_________________

This poem is about so many things, and it used to be about so many more. (In that version I can’t find. I don’t think I burned it–I’m just not sure where it is.) There used to be a line in there from a friend who burned trash with me once and said, “I’m the worst person you know.”

There is redemption in burning trash. In getting caught up.

A couple of weeks ago there were three posts that people were sharing on Facebook, all related, I think, to burning trash—at least metaphorically.

First, there was this one, on the potential benefits of procrastination, called “Procrastination Rules.” The only point at which I disagreed was in the penultimate paragraph (most of which I did agree with), in which Frank Partnoy said, “If we aren’t working at all, we are being slothful. If we are working on something unimportant, we are showing bad judgment. But if we are working on something important, then does it really make sense to judge us negatively for not working on something less important? If we put off errands because we are trying to cure cancer, are we really procrastinating? And if that is the meaning of procrastination, why is it so bad?”

Terrific questions, but two other posts were flying around the same day that made it clear it’s not true that we’re being slothful “if we aren’t working at all.”

One was this one, “Why Killing Time Isn’t a Sin,” in which Leo Babauta says “Killing time isn’t a sin — it’s a misnomer. We’ve framed the question entirely wrong. It’s not a matter of “killing” time, but of enjoying it….Now we might spend this moment working if that work brings us joy. But we might also spend it relaxing, doing nothing, feeling the breeze on the nape of our neck, losing ourselves in conversation with a cherished friend, snuggling under the covers with a lover. This is life. A life of joy, of wonderfulness.”

What’s interesting to me is that this seems like neither action nor contemplation to me (I see contemplation as somewhat synonymous to meditation—something requiring focus and effort). This just seems like fun.

And fun, as an anti-dote, can be very powerful, as Tim Kreider points out in “The ‘Busy’ Trap.” I loved how forthrightly he said, “I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know.” But beyond his terrific voice (I’m really enjoying his book, We Learn Nothing), he has some really important points.

“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”

This is connected to what a lot of creativity researchers talk about in the steps, or stages of creativity (which I covered in my first blog, “Creativity: A Pumpkin Saga”):

“People who describe the stages or steps of creativity use some variation of the following list (much of which comes from an early researcher named Wallas, though he is rarely cited):
• Immersion (where you consider all the possibilities)
• Incubation (where you set your work aside and let your subconscious stew)
• Inspiration (when, like Archimedes, you have your “eureka!” moment—and bathrooms rank high statistically as places where we report getting inspired*, btw. But I shouldn’t say “we” because I would never report that, even if it were true, which of course it’s not)
• Verification (where someone whose judgment matters, for whatever reason, says, “Yes! Tastes great!” or “I’ll publish that!”).”

Procrastination gets you in trouble sometimes in relation to this list, because if you’re working with a deadline, and you spend too much time on the immersion stage, you might not have much time to leave for the incubation stage, and that might cut down on the likelihood of inspiration.

There’s a balance there–as in most things, as in the story of Mary and Martha (tune in tomorrow for that one), as in burning trash–you don’t want to put it off too long, because then you’ll have bags and bags of things to burn and it’ll take forever to get it done. But you don’t want to do it every day, because then you’ll have a tiny little boring fire that will be out before you have time to appreciate how wonderful the moment is, how beautiful the flames, how delicate the ashes are as they lift up and float away.

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Posted in Burnout, Creativity, God Stuff, Poetry, Procrastination, Uncategorized, Work Life

The Zennoyance of M. Bullock Dresser

Posted on July 14, 2012 | 4 comments

[Pardon me while I Prufrock a minute.]

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai dietro una vettura lenta,
perché eravamo in un no sorpasso di corsia….”

“Whether it’s pain or pleasure, through lojong practice we come to have a sense of letting our experience be as it is without trying to manipulate it, push it away, or grasp it. The pleasurable aspects of being human as well as the painful ones become the key to awakening bodhichitta.” Pema Chodron Start Where You Are

Let us go then, you and I,
While the drought sucks all the rain out of the sky,
Like a baby nursing at its mama’s breast,
Let us go through several tiny towns,
The kind with no uptown or down,
And speed traps their biggest revenue stream,
The middle class mostly a dream,
One of those nightmares where you find a room
That leads you to numberless other rooms
You never knew you had–
Oh, stop. Don’t tell me about your day.
Let’s just hit the road.

On Highway 14 the woman drove too leisurely,
In a lime-green Mercedes named Martini.

The heat wave that sharpens its teeth on a wheel,
The heat swamp that buffs its nails on a wheel,
Licked its lips along the shoulder of the road,
Turned off the cruise control at some point,
Rolled down the window to watch something congeal,
Did a three-point turn, put the pedal to the floor,
And seeing no sheriff’s car anywhere in sight,
Broke the speed of sound, and drove out of sight. But

On Highway 14 the woman drove too leisurely,
In a lime-green Mercedes named Martini.

____________________________

I might work some more on that, being as I’m middle aged, and wondering what I am not (nor was meant to be) and wondering, A LOT lately, “Do I dare” and “Do I dare?”

In the meantime, let me talk about that Mercedes. My parents and Wendell and I had set off this morning about 10 for Rockford, to see my Aunt Margie, who’s in a nursing home there. Somewhere between Spring Green and Madison, we ended up behind a lovely lime-green Mercedes convertible with the license plate “MARTINIS.”

First of all, I’m not sure I’d want to advertise I LOVE ALCOHOL SO MUCH IT’S MY PERSONALIZED PLATE, just in case I ever got pulled over.

(Not that I get pulled over a lot. Mom and I talked today about traffic tickets we’d gotten–neither of us has gotten many. But I remember being very impressed when my Gran’mommy got a speeding ticket when she was in her seventies, for going something like 60 in a 40mph zone. My cousin Jodie and I used to freak out when we watched her drive because she was old-school—she would have her right foot on the gas and her left foot poised over the brake. I particularly like to think about her as a driver because it stood in marked contrast to her basic mode as a kindly and gentle and extremely ladylike Baptist.)

Second of all, WOW that Mercedes was going slow. About 45, and it’s actually a highway, where you can go pretty much 60 and not worry at all about getting pulled over. There was some slight lane meanderage on the Mercedes’ part as well.

At the stoplight in Black Earth, the woman who was driving was fixing her hair in her fetching visor-cap and YES, the light turned green, and she kept working on her hair for a count of 1-2-3.

We couldn’t pass–Highway 14 is two-lane most of the way, and a lot of no-passing zones (or, as I like to think of them, no sorpasso di corsias) and a fair amount of traffic. It was timed exactly wrong almost the whole way.

Third of all (or is it fifth of all?), it wasn’t really “MARTINIS.” It’s the name of a popular cocktail, though. I just don’t want to go listing license plates on my blog. Except, if you make your personalized plate really easy to remember and then drive in really annoying ways in front of people, you should kind of expect to show up in a blog.

In a very dramatic moment, the minivan behind us gunned it to pass them, and barely made it back over before the passing lane ended, with oncoming traffic approaching, too. The passenger in MARTINIS flipped off the minivan, which puzzled us, until my Dad pointed out that maybe someone in the minivan had flipped them off first.

“I’m pretty sure they’re just out for a cruise,” my son said.

Finally, we were able to pass them. I thought of them briefly as we drove through Janesville later and it was raining—were the Martinis o.k.? Did they get the top up in time?

If I’d been in a hurry, I’m sure I would have been mad. My friend & UW System colleague Ryan Martin explains why we get so mad when we’re driving in this great post, “All the Rage.”

But honestly, my annoyance didn’t shift into anger today. They were so annoying it ended up being hilarious. I asked on Facebook this evening if anyone knew them, and I now know who they are. They own a bar, actually, so I’m wondering if I can turn this into a free drink somehow.

Because this is a totally flattering portrait of them, right? And of me, right?

Here’s the thing, and the reason I quoted Pema Chodron—at some point, getting annoyed at someone who’s being annoying, and then expressing that annoyance, is all just annoying. Same with obnoxious behavior. It’s hard to respond to rudeness without also being rude.

Like last night, during the performance of Skylight (PHENOMENAL—everyone should go see this play), I paid good money for a great seat in the second row, but there were three people in front of me who thought sitting in the FRONT ROW of the Touchstone Theater, a small venue, during a terrific show–they thought that was a good time to talk. It wasn’t so much that I could hear them (I have hearing aids), but they were leaning over a lot, so it was visually distracting. There were some odd dynamics going on, too—I couldn’t tell if the woman in the middle was sick, and her husband and friend were concerned, or if they chose Skylight because they were currently in a ménage a trois. I wondered about the latter because there seemed to be a lot of meaningful shoulder-rubs and knee-strokings in all kinds of variations (him on her, him on other her, her on her, her on him, other her on him). Regardless–what I really wanted to do was thump each of them on the head.

(I did once kick the seat of a woman in front of me at Sundance theater once during a Clooney movie—she was texting on a smart phone and it was REALLY BRIGHT.)

But it’s rude to thump someone on the head, and I was worried that my thumping might be an even bigger distraction to the actors I was already worried were distracted (Clooney couldn’t see me kicking the seat of the woman in front of me), or make them talk MORE, or begin to rub the sore spots for each other where they’d been thumped.

I moved to a different seat at half-time, but the three lovers (or the married couple and friend, one of whom was sick) didn’t return. Which was a little disappointing, since I’d complained about them to numerous people while eating my much-anticipated brownie, which, frankly, was a little dry (the brownies are usually amazing there).

One moral of these stories is, I don’t mind being annoyed as long as I get a story out of it.

Another part of what it comes down to is I’m not sure I have the right to be angry (or even annoyed). My Gran’mommy wouldn’t let us say “darn” or “heck” when we were little, because they were just substitutes for “damn” and “hell.” I remember asking at some point what I was supposed to say when I got mad, and she essentially said, “Don’t get mad.”

I don’t think of myself as an angry person, but maybe these lines from Justified apply (I’d love it if they did–I’d love being an Elmore Leonard character):

At the end of the pilot, Raylan has broken into the home of his ex-wife and her new husband in the middle of the night, and is then chatting with her out on the deck.

“I just never thought of myself as an angry man,” he says, after explaining why he shot a man.

And Winona says, ”Oh. Raylan, well, you do a good job of hiding it—I suppose most folks don’t see it, but honestly? You’re the angriest man I have ever known.”

What I’m hoping for is some sort of Zen Baptist process by which I can feel annoyance (read: anger) and express it without making the world a worse place, without cancelling out the benefit of however many days of meditation and Bible reading I’ve managed to string together.

This won’t be easy. The Baptist part of me remembers this verse, Matthew 7:3, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” Most of the time I complain, I feel compelled to point out my own guilt. That’s not the worst habit in the world (I find it annoying when others don’t admit their own guilt, ever), but do I really have to list all the ways I’ve annoyed people who were driving behind me before I can say, “that Mercedes was really annoying,” before I can allow myself to be annoyed?

Is the height of Zen training really to get to the point where I drive behind a car going slower than I want to go and my actual response goes something like, “it is what it is,” and I use the slower pace to be mindful about my surroundings? How different is that, really, from trying never to get angry?

Just asking. I’ll stop now before I get carried away.

The pilot of Justified ends with Raylan processing Winona’s comment, goes to the credits, and we get to hear, once again, Tone Z with Gangsta Grass:

“On this lonely road,
trying to make it home
Doing it by my lonesome-pissed off, who wants some
I see them long hard times to come.”

If I were an Elmore Leonard show, I’d be done already. Since it’s me, I’ll just say that my new life goal is to mention Timothy Olyphant every other blog entry.

And also to get a free drink from restaurant owners who drive slowly enough, for long enough, that I think they owe me something. Unless that annoys them, in which case I apologize for being annoyed.

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Posted in Family, God Stuff, Poetry, Searching, Spring Green, Uncategorized